The Other Day...

This is absolutely gorgeous!!!!! So pretty that I would...

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:22:55 -0700

This is absolutely gorgeous!!!!! So pretty that I would probably stare at them for a long time and refuse to eat what’s on the plate.

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” – George S. Patton"

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:04:12 -0700

““If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” – George S. Patton”

New song that I really like, from Sara Bareilles.

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:29:32 -0700

New song that I really like, from Sara Bareilles.

Two weeks ago, i couldn’t stop listening to this song....

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:28:48 -0700

Two weeks ago, i couldn’t stop listening to this song. It’s so good.

Solitude

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:36:11 -0700

There seems to be a solitude theme in my tumblr feed at this moment in time. Different blogs have posted about it and I thought it would be interesting to note:

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” ~ Bell Hooks

and this: http://zenhabits.net/creative-habit/
and this: http://readwrite.com/2013/03/29/the-iphone-killed-my-creativity

Interview with childhood historian Paula Fass

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:51:00 -0700

Excellent interview; so many interesting points…from the history of children-parents dynamics, parenting styles, the role of grandparents in our children’s lives, to the perception of our generation/ the next generation, etc etc…

http://alumni.berkeley.edu/news/california-magazine/spring-2013-growing/kids-are-alright

I can’t decide which excerpt to share, but here’s one:

You’ve been teaching long enough to have watched generations come and go. What’s your sense of the kids today?

I’ll talk to you about the undergrads I’ve taught most recently, at Rutgers, where I taught the last two falls. Rutgers, like Berkeley, is a public university in a generally prosperous state. These were students who seemed definitely not to have a sense of themselves as a generation. They seemed to feel sorry for themselves, almost as if they had taken on their parents’ anxieties. I was very upset after teaching those two semesters, finding that my students didn’t have a sense of, “We’re going to go forth, we’re going to create new things, we’re going to be different and better than our parents.” It felt more like, “I’m going to keep my nose to the grindstone and get my grades up, because I need to go to graduate school.” They felt like old people in the classroom. My generation said, “Never trust anyone over 30.” Well, these people are still going to be students when they’re 30.

The other thing that I’ve noticed is that women students today are terribly worried about how they’re going to organize their lives. They feel the pressure of wanting careers and wanting to have children and they come to me for advice. I’ve had many students, many undergraduates be very concerned about how to combine the two. On the one hand, they’re expected to have careers and go to work, and they’re going to have to work just to maintain the lifestyle they’re accustomed to. But they also want to have children and wonder how they’re going to manage it. That’s an anxiety they have.

So here’s a generation that’s come out of the ’60s generation that said, “We’re going to redo the world,” and their children have this anxiety about being able to fulfill the objective presented to them: the liberationist objective. That’s not a generation seeing itself in alternative terms. Based on that, I can’t talk about what the current generation stands for, how they’re going to make their mark.

Figuring things out

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:45:00 -0700

Reading many different, and sometimes conflicting, suggestions and advice actually leads to not making a decision. It’s impossible. My brain can no longer logically process anymore pros and cons to make a decision, to the point where my mind finally lets go….and just simply be.

It’s as if my mind has resigned. “Whatever comes, I’ll handle.” It says. “No point planning and speculating and strategizing.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I recently read a book called It is Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini that resonates similarly. It is a young adult fiction that was selected by my book club to read for this month, and I ended up quite liking it. (I mostly read non-fiction, and I didn’t think I would like reading a book about high schoolers, so it was a pleasant surprise.)

The main character, Craig, suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts mainly because the academic pressure got too high. He is a self-driven young man with lots of potential and got into an elite pre-professional high school, but in comparison to his peers, he has to work really hard just to get a 93…and that, according to him and the school, just ain’t cuttin’ it. In addition, his close friend gets As without studying and while smoking pot all the time. Despite having a loving and supportive family, Craig just keeps “feeling bad”, and his thoughts turned suicidal.

He decided to check himself into a mental hospital, conveniently located within walking distance from his house. That is when things get interesting. There are all kinds of characters in the mental hospital, most of whom have more serious psychological issues than Craig. And yet, I felt more of a warmth with them than with Craig’s high school friends.

While some of the mental health patients can’t figure themselves out and probably won’t be able to live an independent and healthy life in the real world, they show their genuine selves inside the mental hospital. You start getting to know these characters as how they are, whether they don’t like loud noises and stay in bed all day, or only like to wear velvet pants, or gets paranoid about noises close to their bedrooms and swoosh around the hallways. They resist what they don’t like, and are free to participate in activities that they like. Ironically, they are more real and relatable than the cut-throat, self-obsessed high schoolers in Craig’s life.

And somehow, the honest portrayals of these troubling thoughts and psychological problems, the genuine conversations among the characters—they were comforting to me.

Rock-a-bye baby

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 17:02:09 -0700

Rock-a-bye baby:

What a funny and interesting article. Good read:

“She would beg desperately for milk, then hyperventilate at the breast, shaking her head from side to side with her mouth open, as if possessed by a boob goblin.”

mappleton: Illuminating Quotes, Visualised. Part VI: James...

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:14:33 -0700

mappleton:

Illuminating Quotes, Visualised.

Part VI: James Baldwin is perhaps my favourite quotist. He has said far too many profound, insightful, and mind-flipping things to be considered just an author. Although his books are very good – particularly The Fire Next Time. And he knows what books are actually about;

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”

Teaching Tool

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:48:00 -0800

Teaching Tool:

I just came across this teaching tool. It looks really helpful and seems to address many of the concerns that I feel education technology does not solve. Technology should enhance education, not replace guidance, teaching, and in-person discussions. The recent explosion of online education is overwhelming, and it is hard to know which tools really help learning.

Does education technology work?

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:36:42 -0800

Does education technology work?

So true. Cuts right to the heart of the matter.

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:43:03 -0800

So true. Cuts right to the heart of the matter.

beingblog: “The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:13:22 -0800

beingblog:

“The main thing is the YOU beneath the clothes and skin — the ability to do, the will to conquer, the determination to understand and know this great, wonderful, curious world.

Don’t shrink from new experiences and custom. Take the cold bath bravely. Enter into the spirit of your big bed-room. Enjoy what is and not pine for what is not.

Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself. Make yourself do unpleasant things, so as to gain the upper hand of your soul.”

~W.E.B. Du Bois in a letter to his daughter Yolande (1914)

photo by Matteo Mazzadri / Flickr, cc by-nc-nd 2.0

The Big Three O

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:10:00 -0800

The other day, I was going in for a health screening as part of my employee health incentive program, and I was assigned to a young lady as my medical screener. She looked like a medical student, and perhaps she was doing this screening as part of her program. Before she could do a blood test for me, I needed to fill out some paperwork. I filled out my name, work address, age, etc, and handed it back to her.

When she got my form back, she said: “Oh, you are a 83 baby?”

I paused for a second. “Oh yes, I am, yes. I am 29 years old.”

She smiled: “Me too! In fact, my birthday is coming up at the end of the month and I am getting worried about being 30. I didn’t think I would worry before.”

I can immediately relate to her. When I was 28, I felt like 30 was a ways away. It is in a somewhat far future, and when I see some friends reaching 30 and joking about being over the hill, I just laughed along with them, thinking it is probably no big deal. After all, we are all still young, and I do not celebrate my birthdays as much as when I was in my early 20s anyway, so another birthday is just a number.

When I was 28, I still felt like I’m in the mid-20s. I feel young and there are still tons to learn. Sure, I am much older than a recent graduate at 22 years old, but I have gained some experience, I have gone through a few promotions, and at my workplace, I am still one of the youngest people around.

When I was 28, I heard about women reaching their 30s as “feeling the urge” to get married and have babies. That it is some kind of hormone thing that women start to feel when they are still not married and settled down. I was dubious about this and usually shrugged it off. A part of me wondered: Why is there such desperation when more and more women are getting married and having babies later in their mid-30s, or even mid-40s anyway?

Now that I am 29 and a few months away from 30, I suddenly feel this uneasy sadness about turning 30. The years seem to have gone by faster than expected. Have I grown? I have certainly gained more experience and maturity, but how else have I grown? I know that I am still constantly searching for ways to improve myself, but I have not felt any more satisfied with my improvement. Have I improved? Where do I want to go from here? Can I still re-invent myself in my career path from here on out, or are my patterns pretty much set?

While I want to have kids, do I feel capable of having them in my life soon? Am I mature enough? Even though I am relatively organized and manage my time quite well, I feel like I am barely able to add more exercise and balance to my life in the past few months. Having a child, I have heard, puts your life upside down. Am I ready for that? (Perhaps if my life is already upside down, then having a child would put it back upright).

My facebook wall has increasingly been filled with mommy and baby photos, and a lot of my friends—both career-driven and otherwise—have dropped their careers to have kids. I have several friends who are already on its way to having their 3rd or 4th child even. How do they go back to their career after spending several years out of the workforce, if they choose to? Or even if they did not wait for several years to work again, how can they focus on work when they start work after a few months of having a child, only to go back to maternity leave in a year or so with another pregnancy? When they come back to work, will they still be respected, or would they realize that their skills set have been outdated and the younger generation is surpassing them? Can they still play catch-up? Will the company still hire them back at the same level that they left? Or would they enter at a lower level as before? And how do they balance their work life with taking care of their kids?

These are just some of the questions that comes to mind.

As I nodded and told the screener that I feel the same way, we shared an empathetic smile.

I do not know what the future holds, but I do hope that I will never stop learning and continue to have new experiences in my life. I want to always learn, grow, help others, and continue to find ways to be a better person.

One step at a time.

30 is probably not old in the grand scheme of things, like when I am 60 years old looking back. It might be like when I was 6 and thinking that my 12-year old big sister from school was really old and mature. While turning 30 is a bit unnerving and I am not sure what I would be celebrating about, I hope to make the best of the next decade.

"The best way to get along with people is not to expect them to be like you."

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:46:00 -0800

“The best way to get along with people is not to expect them to be like you.”

- Joyce Meyer (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

What you can do in 2013

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:20:38 -0800

What you can do in 2013

Relieved

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:00:30 -0800

I’m really glad and relieved that Obama won. Even when CBS declared victory, I was still nervous that they called it too early for Ohio as the numbers were so close. A couple of thoughts before and after the election:

1) I read an article a while ago that Steve Jobs predicted that Obama will only be a one-term president. Now, I have always admired Steve Jobs’ vision, and it is because of my great respect for him that I thought he might be on to something. His words definitely made me feel eerie and uncomfortable during the campaigns, especially when there were so many signs that Romney was gaining momentum. So many times, including the lackluster first presidential debate, did I think: “Gosh, Jobs was right! this is happening…” But I am relieved that he wasn’t right this time.

2) Now that Obama won his 2nd and last term, I really really hope I won’t be receiving that many (or any) donation emails from his team every month anymore, or whenever he is facing opposition from Congress. I feel that I pay my fair share of taxes and so yes, I expect the government to do its job and come up with a plan and compromise. The constant emailing for donations make it seem like the U.S. is a charity foundation. It gets redundant and annoying, especially when there are so many without jobs.

A story

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:32:17 -0700

I have always loved this story:

“Two monks were on a pilgrimage. One day, they came to a deep river. At the edge of the river, a young woman sat weeping because she was afraid to cross the river without help. She begged the two monks to help her. The younger monk turned his back. The members of their order were forbidden to touch a woman.

But the older monk picked up the woman without a word and carried her across the river. He put her down on the far side and continued his journey. The younger monk came after him, scolding him and berating him for breaking his vows. He went on this way for a long time.

Finally, at the end of the day the older monk turned to the younger one. “I only carried her across the river. You have been carrying her all day.”

Robert Reich: Memo to the President: Your Next Debate

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:54:16 -0700

Robert Reich: Memo to the President: Your Next Debate:

robertreich:

To: POTUS

From: Robert Reich

RE: Upcoming debate

Your passive performance in the last debate was damaging because it reenforced the Republican claim that you’ve been too passive in getting jobs back and in responding to terrorism abroad.

That doesn’t mean you have to “come out swinging”…

hear hear!

pantslessprogressive: The VP Debate, in one photo....

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:19:36 -0700

pantslessprogressive:

The VP Debate, in one photo. [Reuters/@BuzzfeedAndrew]